Hi, All,

I'm a new member and just wanted to thank everybody in advance for the reams of information you have provided. I have signed up for some credit card deals thanks to this forum (BA 100k, AA 75k x2, US 35k, and SPG 10k).

Looking ahead about a year, I would love to do my first miles journey to visit family abroad. I was hoping some people could check and see if I'm on the right track in my thinking.

My SO and I will need to fly from WAS>EVN. Using some of the tools I discovered from FT, I found the following information on alliance routes and ways I could use my miles to get there and here's what I came up with.

Star Alliance:
LOT via WAW
BMI via LHR
Austrian via VIE

OneWorld:
S7 via DME (I hate this airport)

Skyteam:
Aeroflot via SVO (I hate this airport even more)
Air France via CDG (I've enjoyed this route in the past)

So I've determined that of all my options (the ones I could find at least), the Air France flight is my favorite.

So here are my questions:

1. Is 200k miles +~$3-400 for two to fly business on the AF route worth it?
2. Everywhere on this forum all I read about Delta redemption is terrible, but what if it appears to be my best option still? Avoid like the plague, or just try anyways?
3. Am I right to pay up to 1cpm for delta miles? Economy paid tickets seem to run about $1k anyways.

I just got 60,440 miles in my Delta account at a net cost of about 0.72cpm (spafinder 40mile promotion then selling on ebay). So I figure I'm 30% of the way to my goal.

Last night I identified the following miles opportunities for delta:
$120 2500pts credit card
$20 2500pts check chard
$20 5000pts identity protection
$0 300pts 21st century quote
$0 500pts Liberty auto quote
$0 1500pts sentry quote
$0 275pts e-miles email
$20 2000pts sharebuilder buy/sell stock
$0 5000pts ameritrade (I don't have enough $$ for the fidelity offer)

So that's potentially ~42k more miles, then I have my SPG bonus which is +10 which puts me 50% of the way there.

Sorry for the really long post. I would really just love to hear a yay or nay as to whether I'm wasting my time or on the right track! Thanks again!

Sounds like a lot of work for a few miles. If you are close though, maybe it is worth it.

Perhaps not exactly the information you are looking for, but I have collected 12K miles from Sharebuilder for $0. I opened 4 separate accounts for family members and linked them to my SkyMiles account. I then funded them with minimal $ for investment, used a promo code found online for free trades, and bought stock. Worked like a charm with no $ out of pocket. Depending on your family size, it could be worth more than 2K points for no out of pocket expense.